From ‘sonic shock’ to Attenborough docs: Chris Watson’s 60 years in sound

It’s almost impossible to know where to begin when discussing the work of Chris Watson. The multiple-BAFTA winning sound recordist came close to being eaten alive by a pack of wild hyenas in Africa after disturbing their den at night. He has recorded inside decommissioned nuclear reactors in Lithuania, navigating radioactivity to capture sounds for the award-winning 2019 TV drama Chernobyl. He once recorded mid-air in the North Pole with David Attenborough, in helicopters flown by drunk pilots, while making Frozen Planet. 

But all of these wild journeys can be traced back to Sheffield in the mid-1960s, when Watson, aged around 12, was bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder. “I wouldn't be doing this now without that,” he tells me over the phone, from his home on the Scottish borders. “I'm looking at it now, actually, as I keep it in my studio. It totally liberated me.” 

Watson, now 73, became obsessed with the recorder. “I hoovered everything up,” he says. “I became immediately interested in sound as music. I recorded everything in the house: my mum's budgerigar, the toilet flushing, doors slamming. I began to recognise different acoustic spaces and it just made me listen.” When he realised it was battery powered and he could take it outside, that was another revelatory moment. “I discovered what sound was like out in the real world,” he says. “Bird song and wildlife sounds. I became particularly drawn to that. I could step outside into my parents' back garden and discover a whole new world.”